At the very edge of the fire-strike zones blanketed by wave upon wave of interstellar missiles, a T3 warship, its speed past 200 star-knots, was tearing along at a furious pace!
It ran so near the missiles' strike zones that several times it dodged clear by the barest of margins. A few seconds later, and an interstellar missile's blast would have caught the T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser. One time, the wreck of a destroyed enemy T2 warship, flung out by an enormous shockwave, actually slammed into the T3 Blizzard's hull. One can imagine how near to "danger" the T3 Blizzard was!
Watching from behind, the captains of the two attacking T2 Lion King-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ships were frightened out of their wits. Had Charlotte not conveyed to them beforehand that they were to go by the attack plan they'd drawn up — to act as though the T3 Blizzard weren't there at all — they might not have dared fire now. Even so, their hearts were in their throats; with every round of attack, they had to make certain every last missile fell within its designated target zone, with no great deviation. Deviate even a little too far, and it felt as if their very hearts were being clutched tight. For aboard that T3 Blizzard was their Commander!
The T3 Blizzard, in the midst of this "peril," was hardly idle: the main guns, secondary guns, and even close-in guns it mounted were all firing with everything they had. 50 Blizzard-class interstellar drones had been deployed as the T3 Blizzard's wingmen, ceaselessly delivering the finishing blow to the enemy ships around it. The Blizzard light interstellar missiles stood ready too, each launch sighted precisely on one T2 warship, making certain that target T2 warship was destroyed outright. And to this point, that success rate stood at a full 100%!
It could be called: the missile arrives, the ship is destroyed, the crew are dead.
Han Tianwang watched on the holographic battlefield as that T3 Blizzard charged into his fleet as though into a place empty of men, driving straight for the very center of his fleet — as if pointed right at his flagship!
By now that gravely crippled T3 Arkham-class Medium Interstellar Battleship beside him had begun slowly withdrawing, letting a great number of Fire Salamander ships ring it round. The Fire Salamander chieftain had witnessed this T3 warship's power before; he'd watched, with his own eyes, one of his warships destroyed by it.
"Stop this ship for me!" Han Tianwang, feeling the crisis now too, ordered his fleet to intercept this T3 Blizzard at all costs.
"We can't! This T3 warship's flight path is all bound up with the interstellar missiles' attacks. Our ships are affected; we can't mount any effective suppressing fire!" the pirate boss said in the video window beside him. The pirate boss watched that T3 warship with some dread — it was too mad, this ship; it was, quite simply, dancing with Death! Even a hardened man like him, an interstellar pirate by trade, felt his heart quail to watch it.
"Report — the 500 Snake-folk warships at our rear have launched their charge!" Just then another report came. Those 500 Snake-folk warships Han Tianwang had disregarded earlier had now charged up to the rear of his fleet. This trouble front and back left Han Tianwang, for a moment, rather at a loss. This… how had this interstellar battle come to be fought like this? It was the very opposite of what he'd imagined!
"Young Master Han, all we can do now is steady the line first. Get through these few waves of the enemy's interstellar missiles, and then talk!" the pirate boss proposed.
"Then… it'll have to be that way for now…" Han Tianwang said helplessly. The Young Master Han who'd so proudly commanded 3,000 warships only moments ago now discovered how small and laughable he was in this interstellar war.
But Han Tianwang still consoled himself within: however things stood, he had a vast base of warships; however many tricks that Zhao Chen had up his sleeve, could he really defy the heavens?
Defy the heavens? Zhao Chen didn't know whether he could defy the heavens — but dealing with one trifling Han Tianwang was no problem at all.
"Warning! Star shield under attack — star-shield energy at 67%."
"Warning! The ship's hull under attack — hull overall strength at 89%!"
All manner of information kept surfacing aboard the T3 Blizzard. Charlotte, at this moment, processed this battlefield information swiftly without a flicker of expression, entirely at her ease.
Completion rate updated: enemy ships destroyed reached five hundred — completion 30%.
By this point in the fighting, Zhao Chen's Owl Dragon Fleet had annihilated only 500 of the enemy's warships. Perhaps the figure didn't look very impressive. But unfold that figure and one would find it rather terrifying! Of the 500 warships annihilated: four T3 warships, over 150 T2 warships, and the remaining 350-odd T1 warships. And with the interstellar missiles falling without cease, this number kept climbing.
What did these three figures show? They showed that, to this point, Zhao Chen's main attack targets were still the enemy's T3 and T2 warships. Those vast numbers of T1 warships were, to Zhao Chen, no more than a string of digits. So long as he could destroy the enemy fleet's T2 and T3 warships, then even if 2,000 T1 warships were left in the end, Zhao Chen would fear them not at all! Crushing these T1 warships was as easy as crushing ants — merely a question of expending more munitions. And by then, would the enemy fleet even have the will to fight on?
"Commander, by the System's projection: once the two T2 Lion Kings' current round of attack is complete, we'll be able to destroy outright over 200 T2 warships, with an equal number gravely crippled to varying degrees, their combat power affected. To this point our battle plan has proceeded very smoothly," Aili reported beside him. The enemy had 800 T2 warships in all, and the 200 that had fallen were, for the most part, main-line warships, the rest frigates. So although the enemy fleet's ship count wasn't dropping very fast, its overall combat power had already fallen outright by a third!
Just then, Charlotte's eyes fixed on a T3 warship. It was a T3 Porcupine-class Medium Interstellar Destroyer! This T3 Porcupine had already trained its main gun on the T3 Blizzard — and the T3 Blizzard's bow cannon had already locked onto it.
A mere destroyer dared trade shots with the T3 Blizzard?
Charlotte gave a cold smile, a tiger fang bared at the corner of her mouth. "Courting death!"